


by any other name

by thefireplanet



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Did Not Deserve This, First of All Marvel: How Dare You, Infinty War Spoilers, M/M, Thanos Can Kiss My Ass Thanks, Unnecessary Song of Achilles Reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 22:56:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefireplanet/pseuds/thefireplanet
Summary: “I,” Bucky pauses, lips pressing together, “need Steve Rogers.”Steve’s bravado fails him. He reaches up, hooking his fingers into the fabric of Bucky’s sling, and together they wait for the coming dark.(INFINITY WAR SPOILERS)





	by any other name

**Author's Note:**

> this is an attempt to process my own grief, which is plentiful over these dumb fictional boys. thanks, _infinity war_ , for making me sob in front of a room full of people i don't know. 
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://dreamsalittlebigger.tumblr.com/) if you want to cry together.

“…S—”

 

“Steve.”

He starts, slamming his head against the control panel of the Quinjet with a curse. A hand around his ankle and then he’s blinking at the dim light of the cabin, and Bucky’s face as it leans over him. Steve traces the familiar lines of his bemused expression. 

“Oh,” he rasps. “Hey, Buck.”

“Hey,” Bucky replies mildly. “What are you doing?”

“Just some repairs.”

“Yeah? What’s wrong with it?”

Steve panics, reaching behind him and yanking out the first thing his hand connects with: a bundle of wires and metal siding. “The navigation system.”

“Ah.”

Steve doesn’t move. The scuffed floor of the Quinjet leeches warmth from his back, all the places his undershirt’s rucked up from where Bucky had dragged him. The call had come in from T’Challa two hours and thirty-six minutes ago; Steve had been sitting on the Wakandan landing pad for two, feeling guilty that he’d left Sam and Nat to clean up the Lebanon op and guiltier still that he couldn’t seem to step out of the goddamn plane.

Bucky sits carefully next to him, a little lopsided to compensate for the weight of a missing arm. The last time Steve had seen him had been through the frosted glass of a cryo tube.

“Are you avoiding me?”

“No,” Steve answers immediately.

“I get it.” Bucky leans sideways into the pilot’s seat. “I didn’t know what to say, either.”

Steve shuts his eyes. Bucky’s still there when he opens them. The fact’s a relief, and a burden. He brings his knuckles against the soft cloth covering Bucky’s knee.

“Are you back?”

Bucky’s mouth quirks. It’s not a smile; not yet. “I’m back.”

Steve lets out a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding, hidden tension easing in the pit of his stomach.

“Good.”

 

“Steve!”

He tramps across the soft grass. Bucky’s waving at him from a modest hut, dragging a gate closed through the loamy soil. The air is full of the bleating of goats, the sharp stench of fertilizer, the pleasant undercurrent of dirt. In the distance are the whispered secrets of unfamiliar trees. Steve itches with desire, for the stillness or for something else. 

“You know, if you got a phone, I could tell you I was coming—”

“What, so I could freshen up?” Bucky’s eyes gleam. “You’re not that important, Rogers.”

“You smell,” Steve answers amiably, gripping Bucky in a one-armed hug, nails digging through the dirty ends of his hair and into his neck. “T’Challa said they offered you a place closer to the palace.”

Bucky pulls away, plucking at the blue-green fabric tied tightly over the stump of his arm. “I like it here.”

Steve looks around; the goats, the trees, the grass. The sun, already dipped below the canopy, painting the world in vibrant twilight. “Me, too.”

Bucky scuffs his hand against his chin, almost self-conscious. “Where were you this time?”

“Colombia.”

“And before that it was Serbia, and Syria, and Iraq—you ever get tired?”

“Sometimes.”

“No one’s—” Bucky frowns. A colorful bird swoops low, squawking angrily into the trees. “No one’s asking you to save the world.”

“Somebody’s got to.”

“Leave that to Stark.”

Steve’s mouth twists wryly. “Sometimes a nomad can get more done than a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

“The world needs Steve Rogers, too.”

Steve shrugs agreeably, and Bucky’s frown deepens. Steve has the sudden urge to wipe a thumb through the furrows forming between eyebrows; to smooth long hair behind an ear. There’s nothing in the old barometer of their friendship to help him measure that.

“ _I_ ,” Bucky pauses, lips pressing together, “need Steve Rogers.”

Steve’s bravado fails him. He reaches up, hooking his fingers into the fabric of Bucky’s sling, and together they wait for the coming dark.

 

“ _Steve_.”

He buries his face against Bucky’s neck, stubble scratching across his nose as he breathes and breathes and breathes. The night is liquid around them, honey-dark, a pleasant stickiness that makes them sweat. He breathes and breathes and breathes.

Bucky tugs sharply on his ear and then kisses him sweetly on the lips. “Stop thinking.”

“Mm,” Steve hums, pressing down, listening to the symphony of crickets and their heartbeats, feeling the warmth of another hand pressed at the small of his back.

“Don’t go,” Bucky sighs, jostling his hand through the long, newly-dark strands of Steve’s hair. “The goats miss you.”

“I miss them, too.”

Bucky snorts, and then squeezes his eyes shut. The air shifts. “How are you not tired, yet?” he asks, and Steve knows he’s not talking about tonight.

“I guess I’m.” He digs his chin into Bucky’s collarbone. “I guess I’m afraid to stop.”

“We should run away.”

Steve thinks of Clint’s farm. The same warm bed every morning. The same soft pillow every night. Muscles stretched pleasantly in physical labor, working the land like Bucky does now and not—beating faces on the other side of the world. He wants.

But he’s not a child; life isn’t a fairy tale, and it’s not about wants.

“Where should we go?”

“Brooklyn,” Bucky says without hesitation, like he’s been thinking about it. “We could live right under everyone’s noses.”

“Do you,” Steve snorts, feeling off-kilter, blinking rapidly, “do you remember the—” He stops. He can’t finish. Bucky drags him closer. Steve wants to sink into his bones. It’s not very romantic, he guesses, but it’s the truth. _Bucky_.

He sucks in a shaky breath. For a while, there is this—Bucky tracing idle patterns into his skin, the hoot of a hidden owl, and the world drifting away. Then Bucky asks, voice flat, “Where are you going this time?”

“France. Then Edinburgh.” Steve exhales. “Wanda and Vision haven’t checked in.”

“M’Baku says he’ll give me a tour of Jabari land.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t worry.” Bucky presses a knuckle against Steve’s spine. “I’ll wait for you.”

 

“Steve.”

He readjusts the vibranium gauntlets, molten sun spilling through the windows to catch the golden joints of Bucky’s new arm. Steve traces the tributaries running across the molded shoulder, the inner elbow, the wrist. Shuri had outdone herself; it’s a beautiful piece of design work.

Steve hates it.

“Hey.” Bucky grips his M249 Paratrooper SAW casually, barrel pointed between their boots; his eyes are sharp as he takes in the dusty stretch of plain beyond the glass.

“I went home,” Steve blurts, hand dropping to his side. Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“New York?”

“The Avengers Compound.”

Bucky watches him carefully. Steve feels the steady thrum of adrenaline coming to rest across his shoulders, an old friend welcomed back again. It could be 1944. It could be 2012. It doesn’t matter. What had Bucky said, back in Bucharest?

_It always ends in a fight_.

Steve presses his teeth together. “I wish—” He swallows. Bucky’s mouth quirks. It’s almost a smile. Could be one, if given time to grow.

“I know.”

Steve shakes his head. “That doesn’t mean—that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with—”

“It’s ok.” Bucky nudges his shoulder. It could be 1944. 1940. 1936. He watches Steve steadily. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.”

 

“…Steve?”

He’s thinking it must be a mistake as he turns. The _snap_ pulses in his ears like a gunshot, but the Wakandan jungle still stands, the scattered wildlife and trampled undergrowth; he can see the city in the distance.

He’s thinking it must be a mistake.

Bucky had called for him. Called his name. Steve could count on one hand the number of people who remembered that. Bucky was foremost on the list; Steve would know him blind, at the end of the world. Had watched the metal arm flash dangerously across the plain, slashing a path through the rabid hoard. Had thought only of that little clearing left behind so many weeks ago, the warm bed, the goats, the hand buried in his hair—

Bucky’s eyes aren’t panicked. Bucky doesn’t _panic_. But he’s confused. And frightened. Steve knows him better than anyone. Steve knows him.

Bucky tries to step, those same eyes trained on Steve’s face, but somewhere between the rise and the fall his legs disappear. Steve’s own feet are roots, planted firmly. Just like the train. The _fucking_ train—

Bucky tumbles forward. His skin folds. Like smoke on a gentle breeze, he vanishes.

Steve stares, mute and dumb.

_We now commit his body to the ground_ , he thinks ridiculously, heart pounding painful and hard in his chest, _earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust—_

Someone wails. High and sharp. The sound jolts Steve into action, slow steps towards Bucky’s M249 Paratrooper SAW cradled by the detritus and death, the carpet of dusty earth shaped vaguely like a human. He bends down, reaching, fingers splaying through the ashes. They stain his palm, the pads of his fingers.

And on the breeze, the last word Bucky Barnes ever spoke—

_Steve?_

“Captain.”

He is feeding the last goat. The only goat. The rest have already been stamped into the soil by the frantic pounding of a single pair of hooves. The ugly, hoary thing keeps bleating its displeasure.

Genocide had not touched anything else—not the simple hut, or the wide, friendly branches of the trees, or the soft blue fabric Bucky had used to cover his mangled shoulder. But the world is quiet. There is no more peace here.

There is no more peace anywhere.

“It has been some time. The others wonder when you will return.”

Steve wants to drift gently into the dusty earth. He does not want to fight; has lost the edge for it, the will. He says, “I’m coming.”

Thor stops. Steve can pick out the bulky form in the corner of his eye but does not turn. Time away had brought regality and power to his friend, but had not softened the kindness in his eyes, nor the worthiness of his heart—not even the fate that had befallen his people, his family, his home had so petrified him.

Steve can feel his own body calcifying with each passing second.

“How can we do it?” he asks. What he means is _how can we go on._ What he means is _how are we supposed to_. Thor takes a deep breath, petting the goat good-naturedly as it meanders over to the edge of its paddock.

“I have lost my brother, my father, my mother—I have lost my realm, my hammer, my eyes. But I have not lost hope.”

“Hope,” Steve says bitterly. He’s startled by the giant hand suddenly gripping the back of his neck. The air cracks, warm, tingling like a promise.

“Yes. Hope. And when this journey is over, you and I will join those we have lost in the golden halls of Valhalla, to drink and be merry until the end of days.”

Steve’s mouth quirks. It’s not a smile. “Haven’t we reached those?”

“Not yet, I think.” Thor lets go, eyeing the purple sky. “You will see him again. We will see all of them again.”

Steve’s breath flutters up his throat, familiar in the way of an old ache. He thinks of Sam’s steady presence, of Wanda’s quiet strength, of T’Challa’s good heart. He thinks of Bucky.

Bucky. Bucky. Bucky.

Thor says, “Oh. And this might interest you as well—the rabbit and I have developed a plan.”

Steve sets his jaw.

“When do we start?”


End file.
